Tracking Notifications: Best Solutions for Android & iPhone

With every type of brand, company, tool, and application sending push notifications, the importance of tracking notifications cannot be understated. Proper tracking is the key to evaluating the effectiveness of your notifications campaign and ensuring they are reaching the target audience.

We will discuss what tracking notifications mean and what some of the top tools are available for it.

Part 1: Overview of Tracking Notifications

Before we explore the concept of tracking notifications in detail, let’s discuss some basics.

What is a push notification?

A push notification is a small pop-up message used by an app or website to communicate vital information to its target audience. It is a mobile-friendly marketing and customer engagement channel because users can easily view the notification from the device lock screen, even when the app is closed.

Here’s an example of a push notification on an iPhone:

Source：leanplum-wordpress

The following is another example of a casual and engaging push notification sent by CNN on an Android device:

Source:https://cv-images.clickhole.com

A huge benefit of push notifications is that they can be viewed in real-time, unlike other channels like emails. Hence, apps can expect immediate engagement via push notifications.

Importance of Tracking Push Notifications

Suppose you are wondering why you need to track push notifications in the first place. In that case, the answer is simple: tracking notifications allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your push notification marketing campaign.

Here are the key reasons why you must incorporate tracking notifications as part of your customer engagement strategy:

Key Push Notification Metrics to Track

You can further understand the significance of tracking push notifications by looking at the key metrics you need to track:

• Delivery Rate: Refers to whether push notifications are reaching the target audience and is normally calculated in %.

Delivery Rate= (Number of Delivered Notifications / Total Sent Notifications) × 100

• Open Rate: Measures how many users tap the push notification to open the app.

Open Rate= (Number of Opens / Number of Delivered Notifications) × 100

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Tracks the percentage of users who both open the notification and perform a desired action, such as clicking on a CTA or link.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)= (Number of Clicks / Number of Delivered Notifications) × 100

• Conversion Rate: Measures the percentage of users who complete a desired action (e.g., buying something) after opening the notification.

Conversion Rate= (Number of Conversions / Number of Clicks) × 100

• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of users who opt out of receiving push notifications.

Unsubscribe Rate= (Number of Unsubscribes / Total Subscribers) × 100

• Time to Open: Tracks how quickly users open a push notification after receiving it.

Time to Open = (Sum of (Time of Open - Time of Delivery)) / Total Opens

Now that you know about the key engagement metrics for tracking notifications, let’s see how you can do it with different tools.

Part 2. Tools for Tracking Push Notifications

There are three different types of tools available for tracking push notifications. Let’s discuss all of them one by one:

1.Built-in Analytics

Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) and Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) are two of the most popular services to send push notifications to Android and iOS devices. They have built-in analytics tools to support your tracking notification strategy.

🔍Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) Analytics

FCM is Google's official push notification service. You can use it to send notifications to all major types of devices, including iOS, Android, and web applications. FCM’s integration with Google Analytics is one of the key features that help you track your notifications and monitor their performance.

Source：static

Some of the key metrics you can measure with FCM analytics are:

• Delivery status is used to determine whether the notifications have been successfully delivered.
• Engagement metrics to measure user retention as well as specific actions within the app.
• Conversion rate to determine if the target audience is performing the intended action after clicking on the push notification.
• FCM also supports A/B testing to help you test out different push notification formats and optimize your campaign.

🔍Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) Analytics

Apple Push Notification Services (APNs) do not have advanced analytics like the FCM. Instead, it provides very basic information about the delivery of the notification and encourages integration with third-party platforms and services to get detailed insights.

Source:https://developer.apple.com

Some of the information you can get in the built-in dashboard of APNs is:

• Delivery feedback to determine if a push notification can be sent to the target device.
• Push notification logs containing complete records of when notifications were sent.
• Custom push notification tracking with a third-party tool like Firebase.

Overall, neither of these built-in push notification platforms offers analytics as advanced as the ones available in third-party tools.

2.Reliable Third-Party Tools for Tracking Notifications

2.2.1 EngageLab

EngageLab is a customer engagement platform that supports various channels, including app and web push notifications. It supports quick and easy integration through powerful technology to help you set up an automated push notifications campaign.

Moreover, EngageLab supports sending push notifications of many different types, such as text-only and text with images, to bring variety and reach a wide audience. Most importantly, it offers thorough analytics features to help you obtain all the key insights about the effectiveness of your push notifications campaign and tweak it for better engagement.

2.2.2 OneSignal

OneSignal is one of the most popular names in the customer engagement and push notifications industry. It offers comprehensive tracking and engagement insights, including notification insights.

2.2.3 PushEngage

PushEngage is a simple, but powerful push notification platform that is specifically made to help businesses engage and retain a large user base. It supports tracking notifications across different platforms, including Android, iOS, and web browsers.

Advanced analytics, automated drip campaigns, and A/B testing are the key features of PushEngage that make it a great to analyze the performance of your push notifications.

3.Custom Analytics

Built-in analytics tools like FCM and third-party tools like EngageLab are typically sufficient to get all the information you need while tracking notifications. Nevertheless, there are companies, especially enterprises, and users with complex requirements that might want to track notifications in a customized manner to fulfill their unique business objectives.

In such a situation, they should use custom analytics to track notifications. Building custom analytics is a multi-step process. Some of these core steps are:

• Get APIs from your push notification platform to extract key metrics like delivery rate and engagement data.
• Set up UTM parameters in your push notifications and integrate them with Google Analytics to monitor traffic and conversions generated by the push notifications.
• Data storage services like AWS Redshift or Google BigQuery can be used to store the data.

Overall, custom analytics take tracking notifications to the next level by providing highly detailed and business-specific insights.

Part 3: Common Challenges & Solutions for Tracking Notifications

Successful implementation of a push notification campaign involves navigating many challenges. Let’s look at some of the common challenges and solutions for tracking notifications:

Challenge # 1: Low Open Rates

Low open rates for push notifications are something that almost every other type of app faces. Many users tend to glance over the notification from the notification bar instead of opening it.

✅Solution

The only solution to increase open rates for push notifications is to try out different variations of the content you are sending. Make it compelling enough for the user to immediately click on the notification.

At the same time, it is important to manage your expectations and know that open rates are generally low for push notifications.

Challenge # 2: Deliverability Issue

The actual delivery of your push notification is heavily dependent on the platform you are using to send it. If you choose the wrong service, there is a high chance you’ll face deliverability issues. It is also important to note that certain settings in the target user’s device can prevent your notifications from being delivered.

✅Solution

Make sure you have the user’s consent to send them push notifications so that they configure their device in a way that it can obtain quick notifications. Moreover, choose a credible push notification service that can send push notifications with a high deliverability rate.

Challenge # 3: Choosing the Right Tool to Track Notifications

The internet is now full of platforms and services that promise to send and analyze push notifications. All of these platforms have similar features, so it can be difficult to choose the one that suits you.

✅Solution

To choose the best push notification analytics platform, you first have to analyze your specific requirements and what metrics you expect from the platform. Moreover, analyze your budget to ensure you are choosing a solution within your budget.

Part 4: Quick Guide to Building Converting Push Notifications with EngageLab

Considering the complexity of setting up push notifications on different platforms, EngageLab is certainly the most user-friendly and affordable way of creating and sending push notifications. The efficient features of EngageLab ensure both your web and app push notifications have a high delivery rate, leading to higher open and conversion rates.

Some key features that make EngageLab the best platform to send push notifications are:

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How to Track Push Notifications with EngageLab?

The process of tracking push notifications with EngageLab starts with setting up a campaign within EngageLab and sending notifications.

EngageLab analyzes your push notifications across all major channels, including FCM, APNs, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, Meizu, and EngageLab’s channel.

You can obtain detailed push statistics in EngageLab and save the report using the export option.

Other than the traditional metrics, EngageLab offers many unique insights about push notifications. Some of them are:

So, if you are looking for a reliable, efficient, and affordable way to set up a push notification campaign and track the notifications, you should try out EngageLab.

Conclusion

As users, we receive a lot of push notifications regularly, but a user rarely pay attention to all the technicalities that make it possible to deliver push notifications at a mass scale.

In addition to the delivery, the analysis of these push notifications can also be complex for many people due to the variety of metrics that need to be considered for tracking notifications. Nevertheless, if you follow the tips discussed above and choose a reliable tool, you should have no issue running a successful push notification campaign and tracking notifications.